Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, USA is the busiest airport in the world by total passengers and number of flights. In 2015, ATL accommodated more than 101 million passengers and 882,000 flights. Dozens of planes departing and arriving at concourses A-D are seen in this Overview.

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Hạ Long Bay, located in the Quảng Ninh Province of Vietnam, is a stunningly beautiful destination. Here, towering limestone pillars and tiny islands topped by a rich, green forest rise from the beautiful waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Halong translates as 'where the dragon descends into the sea' and local legend suggests that this seascape was created when a great mountain dragon charged towards the coast, its flailing tail gouging out the valleys and crevasses in its path.

Dozens of massive cargo ships and tankers - some weighing up to 300,000 tons - are anchored outside the Port of Tanjung Priok in Jakarta, Indonesia. The facility is the country's busiest and most advanced seaport, handling more than 50% of Indonesia's trans-shipment cargo. The port is also among the least efficient in all of Southeast Asia, due to slow customs handling and limited docking capacity.

Lombard Street runs from east to west in San Francisco, California, USA. With eight hairpin turns dispersed over a one-block section in the Russian Hill neighborhood, Lombard is often referred to as "the most crooked street in the world.”

Whakaari, also known as White Island, is an active stratovolcano, situated 48 km (30 mi) from the North Island of New Zealand in the Bay of Plenty. Whakaari is New Zealand’s most active volcano, and has been built up by continuous eruptions over the past 150,000 years. The island is approximately 2 km (1.2 mi) in diameter and rises to a height of 321 m (1,053 ft) above sea level.

The construction of Parliament House in Canberra, Australia involved the removal of the top half of Capital Hill (the mound on which the structure was built). After the project was completed, much of the displaced earth was replaced on top of the building where a lush, green lawn now grows. While much of Canberra was designed by by Walter Burley Griffin in 1913, this specific complex opened in 1988, is designed to look like two boomerangs, and contains approximately 4,400 rooms.

The planned city of La Plata, the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, is characterized by its strict grid pattern. At the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, the new city was awarded two gold medals for the “City of the Future” and “Better performance built.” This is the fifth of seven posts in our week focused on urban planning.

Over the next few days, thousands of people from around the world will head to the desert in Nevada, USA to construct Black Rock City. Laid out in a grid plan with radiating avenues named after the numbers on a clock, the city serves as home to roughly 60,000 people for Burning Man, an annual week-long event. Burning Man is described as an experiment in community, art, self-expression, and radical self-reliance. Additionally residents in Black Rock City practice one of the event's key principles of ‘Leave No Trace’ – meaning significant efforts are taken to make sure as the city is disassembled in the days following the festival, the desert returns to its original state.

The city of Karlsruhe, Germany was planned with a palace tower at its center, surrounded by 32 radiating streets. Because the design resembled the ribs of a folding fan, the city is sometimes called the “fan city” or “Fächerstadt." Additionally, this city's urban plan gave rise to the geometry concept of “Karlsruhe Metric” which refers to a measure of distance that assumes travel is only possible along radial streets and along circular avenues around the center.

We’re continuing this week's focus on urban planning with this Overview of Washington, D.C., USA. The city's L'Enfant Plan was developed in 1791 by Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant for George Washington, the first President of the United States. L’Enfant designed a compass-aligned grid for the city’s streets, with intersecting diagonal avenues that were later named after the states of the union. The diagonal avenues also intersect with the north-south and east-west streets at circles and rectangular plazas in order to create more open, green spaces. Lastly, L'Enfant laid out a 400 foot-wide (122 meter) garden-lined “grand avenue” - what is now know as the National Mall – that connects the US Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial (the latter two are visible at right in this Overview).

8/22/2016

Plaza Del Ejecutivo

Mexico City, Mexico

19.420511533°, -99.08808712°

This week we will be looking at fascinating examples of urban planning - a major focus of the Where We Design chapter in our new book “Overview”. To start off, here is one of our favorite shots of the radiating streets that surround the Plaza Del Ejecutivo in Mexico City, Mexico. If you have examples of other cities that you think might look particularly mesmerizing from above, please let us know in the comments on Facebook.

8/17/2015

L'Eixample

Valencia, Spain

39°27′53″N 0°22′12″W

The urban plan of the L’Eixample district in Valencia, Spain is characterized by long straight streets, a strict grid pattern crossed by wide avenues, and apartments with communal courtyards. A similar layout was used for the district of the same name in Barcelona. The circular structure in the upper right is the Plaza de Toros de Valencia - the city’s largest bullfighting arena.